by Chris Hauty
She is just putting on her coat to leave the apartment when her phone rings. Hayley considers not answering it, being a few minutes late, but connects after the fourth ring. “This is Hayley.”
Karen Rey’s voice emerges from the pinhole speaker in Hayley’s cell phone like marbles poured from a tin can, clattering and scattershot. “Hayley, it’s Karen Rey. I wanted to catch you before you left for work. My apologies for calling you so early.”
Hayley glances at her watch. It’s 7:05 a.m., more than fifteen minutes later than she usually got out the door on work mornings. She must speak to the president today. The sooner she can get to work and get her hands on Monroe’s schedule, the sooner she can begin devising her plan. It would be best to speak to the president privately, but Hayley knows this is next to impossible. The fewer people who hear her message to POTUS, the better.
Rey continues, “We’re shifting you over to the Library of Congress for the remainder of your internship program, Hayley. You can report over there straightaway this morning. Ms. Spellman is expecting you. She’s a supervisory archivist with the library.”
Hayley is stunned. She has neglected to factor her supervisor’s obvious hostility into her equations. The transfer has caught her completely flat-footed, having been too focused on the bad men with guns to notice a bureaucratic, middle-management assassin right beside her. Hayley can scarcely believe her own stupidity in overlooking the enormous threat Rey represented. Buried in the Library of Congress, Hayley might as well be in Lincoln County.
“Ma’am?” Hayley is able to say.
“I’m sorry. I simply don’t think it was an ideal fit, Hayley. Best of luck to you.”
Rey disconnects the call to Hayley with a musketeer’s flourish and turns to her confidant and coworker, Harriet Cohen. “With Fedor Malkin in town, POTUS will never know she’s gone,” she tells Cohen, but really only assuring herself.
* * *
ASHER ARRIVES FOR work just after seven thirty a.m. The White House complex swarms with additional security personnel drawn from all of the usual law enforcement and US government entities. Russian security personnel are also present, distinguishable from their American counterparts only by the quality and cut of their business suits. Beyond the gates, demonstrations and assorted protestors have been kept farther away from the White House complex perimeter than usual. Traffic is diverted off Seventeenth Street for three blocks in either direction, and new portions of Pennsylvania Avenue are cordoned off as well. No chances are being taken with the very important person visiting the White House on this special day.
Making his way through the crowded and hectic corridor on the first floor of the West Wing, Asher enters the White House Operations office and stops in the doorway when he sees a petite young woman who is definitely not Hayley sitting at her desk. She smiles pleasantly at Asher, who continues to gape at her.
“Who are you?” he asks her in an unfriendly way.
“I’m Charlotte,” she tells Asher, offering him her hand.
He doesn’t take her hand. “Where’s Hayley?” he demands to know.
“Who?” she asks innocently. Charlotte had been interning in the scheduling office located on the second floor of the EEOB, and this morning is the first time she has set foot in the West Wing. An assignment with White House Operations is more than she had imagined in her wildest dreams, and she has already group-texted nearly all three thousand names in her contact list with the news. Having heard stories about Asher told by other White House interns, she is intimidated by him. Nevertheless, Charlotte is determined to perform above expectations. Her dad, a huge fan of Monroe, would kill her if she fails to score a selfie with the president.
Asher’s phone buzzes before he can say anything unkind to the new girl. He walks over to his desk and sits in order to answer it.
“It’s me,” Hayley tells him. She is seated at a small metal desk in the subbasement of the James Madison Memorial Building on Independence Avenue. The library’s stacks are silent and still as a mausoleum. Every other bank of overhead fluorescent lights has been turned off to save energy costs, casting even more gloom.
Asher is relieved to hear from his friend. “I’ve been trying to call! Where are you?”
“I turned my phone off. They’re all over that. They suspect I might know something.”
His eyes fall on Charlotte across the room. “There’s some strange person sitting at your desk. Why aren’t you here?”
“I’m at the Library of Congress. Karen Rey transferred me.”
Asher is stunned. “What? Why? Oh, God, is she part of all this, too?”
“No, at least I’m pretty sure she isn’t. This was just office politics.”
The awareness of his own complicity in the plot hangs over Asher like a noxious cloud. “But are you okay?”
A gap yawns in their conversation. The question strikes Hayley as odd. “Asher, did you know one of Odom’s guys came to my place last night?”
“Wait, what? One of them came to your place? When?” His alarm and dismay is genuine.
“Last night. Right after I got home.” Asher doesn’t respond, the words stuck in his throat. “It’s okay,” Hayley assures him. “He just asked a lot of questions and left. But I’m pretty sure they’ll still be following me.”
The silence from Asher continues. Everything has gone so dreadfully wrong, his betrayal of Hayley carving a pit out of his gut and filling it with anxiety. He no longer is frightened, just terribly fatigued. His willpower has deserted him to the extent he doubts whether he can summon the energy to retie the lace on his Ted Baker suede desert boot. All the beautiful objects with which he has adorned his existence now seem garish and wasteful. Self-loathing brings bile to his mouth. What would his parents think of their golden child now?
“Asher? Are you there?” Hayley’s voice is soft and kind, her West Virginia accent like a warm, comforting hand on his cheek.
Asher can barely marshal the words for a response. Quietly and filled with regret, Asher tells Hayley, “I can’t do this.”
His confession does not surprise her. She accepts it without argument. What point would there be in trying to dissuade him? Asher’s trepidation is a danger to her mission. Better he bows out now, before inadvertently getting them both killed. “Okay, Asher. You can only do what you feel is right for you.”
“This just isn’t me. Know what I mean? I’m not cut out for this shit.” He resists crying, but the emotions pent up inside him threaten to erupt.
“It’s okay, Asher. I understand.” She worries he might break down in the office, in front of the new intern. “You have to go home, Asher. Leave work now and go home.”
“Go home,” he repeats. “Back to Greenwich.”
“Yes. It’s not safe in Washington. Go home to Greenwich. Be with your parents.” Hayley catches a glimpse of someone at the end of a long row of bookshelves. Distracted, she warns him again, “It’s not safe here.”
With a shell-shocked expression, Asher disconnects the call. He experiences the peculiar sensation of floating, his brain buzzing uncomfortably. Tears sting his eyes. He is a man on the verge.
Charlotte, the new intern, looks at Asher with the apprehension of a young person who has really experienced nothing but juvenile setbacks and triumphs. His breakdown is alien and excruciating to witness. She wishes he would just get it together. “Is everything all right?” she asks tentatively.
Asher ignores her. Lurching into action, he stands and quickly starts loading all of his personal belongings from the desk into his Tumi Alpha Bravo backpack. More than ten months of artifacts, every last item with any kind of personal connotation to him, he stuffs unceremoniously into his bag, a time capsule of his year in the West Wing. The desk empty and cleared, Asher exits the office without another word, leaving the bewildered intern teetering on the edge of her seat.
7
MONROE
Hayley lowers the phone after her call with Asher and sits perfectly motio
nless, listening to the footsteps echo from the other end of the stacks. She stands and, treading as silently as possible, keeps pace with whoever is on the floor with her. She catches a glimpse of the figure in the half darkness as the footsteps stop. Hayley is chasing a ghost, more paranoia-fueled apparition than man.
“Hello? Who’s there?” she defiantly calls out to the specter.
With a scuffle of footsteps, the shadowy figure darts out of sight. Hayley hears the door of the opposite stairwell open and slowly close. Her visitor has vanished. Total silence returns to the library subbasement, catacomb of tens of thousands of books that will never be read or even retrieved again. This is where knowledge comes to die.
Buried with the books in these stacks, Hayley is also experiencing a form of death. Events unfold aboveground, hurtling toward their denouement, and she can do nothing to affect the outcome. She recalls that Sunday afternoon crouched below the neighbor’s window, the child’s frustration of expecting adult intervention and receiving none. She learned then that action is almost always preferable. Charge forward, never relent. Not once in her life has she backed down from a fight. Watching and waiting isn’t how she has survived this long or gone this far. Her new supervisor at the Library of Congress expects Hayley to stay down in the subbasement for her entire shift, awaiting requests for materials retrieval. The next day will be no different, nor will the day after that. Or she could just leave.
Hayley removes her newly issued Library of Congress credentials and places them on the desk. Her plan will remain the same as before, despite losing her White House access. Somehow she must deliver her message to the president. There is no time to waste. Normally, climbing two sets of stairs, crossing the expansive lobby, and clearing security requires more than seven minutes’ effort. Hayley is back outside, under the brilliant blue December sky in less than four.
* * *
THE RUSSIAN PRESIDENT’S motorcade winds its way around Washington Circle then resumes its journey on K Street, heading east toward the White House. At the outset, demonstrations are scattered only at major intersections along the route, but as the motorcade reaches Farragut Square and turns right onto Seventeenth Street, the number of protestors explodes. District police keep the mob at bay, but emotions are running high. Not only are the crowds opposed to Russia’s threatening posture toward Estonia and other neighbors, but also the assault on demonstrators the previous evening by Malkin’s security forces has made this a very personal struggle. It’s one thing to act like a bully on their own turf, quite another to bring that thuggish behavior to the United States.
Lafayette Square, just north of the White House complex, is jammed with raucous, overstimulated demonstrators carrying signs and banners protesting Malkin’s visit. As the Russian president’s motorcade passes the park to the west, the throng erupts in a single great howl of rage. Park Police struggle to keep the protestors from surging into the otherwise empty street. Russian security personnel, in their vehicles, are on edge, fingers draping trigger guards on their weapons. Malkin, seated in the rear of his armored limo, regards the protestors dispassionately through five-inch-thick bulletproof windows. In the Oval Office, senior aides join Monroe as they gaze out the windows behind the Resolute desk, staring apprehensively at the mob of protestors on the opposite side of the North Lawn, their bellowing outrage filtering into the serene office of the president.
Karen Rey shakes her head, clearly stunned by the size and vehemence of the demonstration. “Maybe an official visit wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
Monroe slowly pivots his head so that a hard stare known well by his army subordinates across numerous military campaigns falls directly on Rey. “Maybe keeping you around wasn’t such a good idea, either.”
Rey swallows hard and says nothing. She exchanges a look with Kyle Rodgers, who backs away from his subordinate like she’s cancer while checking his watch. With an itinerary that is scheduled down to the half minute, he knows there is zero leeway in timing. “How about a little focus here?” the deputy chief of staff prompts his aide.
Eager to be useful, Rey turns for the southwest door leading to the Outer Oval Office. Passing Madison Smith at her desk, juggling a half-dozen tasks simultaneously with not so much as a furrow in her brow, Rey continues to the door leading into the Operations office. Flinging open the door, Rey is aggravated to find Charlotte, Hayley Chill’s replacement intern, alone inside.
“Where’s Asher?” she barks at Charlotte. “Malkin arrives in three minutes.”
The fearsome intern wrangler intimidates the new girl. “I think he left,” Charlotte responds meekly.
“Left? Left for where?” Rey demands to know.
“Connecticut … I think,” Charlotte offers, relieved to be of even this modest assistance.
Rey growls with frustration and turns to exit the office, slamming the door behind her. Charlotte remains seated, hands folded in her lap, beginning to have serious doubts if she will snag a presidential selfie after all.
* * *
HAYLEY JOGS UNDER the shadow of the Capitol building and through the Botanic Garden, veering northwest to Jefferson Drive, which traces the length of the National Mall. Running is second nature, her pace effortless and each footfall seemingly preordained. Past the Air and Space Museum, then the Hirshhorn and the baroque Smithsonian Castle, past national monuments buzzing with the usual swarms of tourists and school groups. None of them knows what she knows, blissfully ignorant of the dark forces roiling behind closed doors to undermine a benign democracy they take for granted. Hayley’s pace is strong and steady. Running is as easy as breathing, effortless whether in work clothes or PT gear.
The Washington Monument looms to her left as Hayley tacks right at Fifteenth Street, jogging north. She has yet to see anything not normally witnessed every weekday on the nation’s front yard. Tourists mix easily with the District’s worker bees. Vehicular traffic in the streets flows steady and unhindered. But as she runs diagonally across the Ellipse to Seventeenth Street, just south of the White House complex, Hayley encounters the fringes of the enormous anti-Russian rally. As she continues running north on Seventeenth, devoid of the normal vehicular traffic, she hears the demonstration before seeing it. An intensifying howl strikes her as bestial, snarling and angry. Soon enough, with the EEOB behind her to the right, Hayley can see Lafayette Square and the throng of protestors corralled by police there. Turning then to her right, Hayley observes, through trees that have shed all of their leaves and stand bare under the clear sky, Malkin’s motorcade pulling up to the door of the Diplomatic Reception Room at the south side of the White House.
Withdrawing her White House credentials from her pocket and draping them around her neck, Hayley advances toward the Seventeenth Street gate outside the EEOB. The Park Police officer at the gate entrance recognizes Hayley and smiles, despite the circumstances. “Hi, Hayley. Crazy day, huh?” Ned remarks.
Hayley, only slightly out of breath from her three-mile run, grins, opting for nonchalance. “Ned, how are you?” She gestures in the direction of Lafayette Square. “Makes you miss home a little, doesn’t it?”
He grins and shrugs. “Not really.”
Hayley laughs, nodding. She grips her credentials hanging from the lanyard around her neck so the policeman can easily see and inputs the four-digit code she has always used. The computer response display on the screen is clearly not what Ned had hoped to see. “Looks like you’re not cleared for today, Hayley.”
She was prepared for this obstacle. “Must be some mistake. I was due in Operations thirty minutes ago. Going to be crazy in there this morning.”
“Sorry, Hayley. Can’t let you through. Maybe you can call Ms. Rey?”
“Karen Rey is going to be way too busy to deal with this right now, Ned.” With a beseeching smile, she adds, “Come on. You know I’m not a terrorist, right?”
The policeman reluctantly frowns and shakes his head. “Can’t do it, Hayley. You’re not entering the comp
lex today.”
Hayley acknowledges Ned’s reluctance to disappoint her with a brave smile and pivots, walking north on Seventeenth Street. Having taken her shot and failed, she is now unsure what next to do. Perhaps Asher hasn’t left the grounds yet. If not, she can enlist his effort to get word to the president. Dialing Asher’s number, she realizes now supporting his decision to leave town was a mistake. As she waits for him to answer, Hayley stares through the fence surrounding the complex. The exterior of the Oval Office is within sight. It might as well be on Mars.
Her call goes to voice mail. In the past, he has always picked up. Asher Danes’s phone is as vital a part of him as his heart. She assumes he is ducking her call, wanting to be done with the whole business. Hayley doesn’t bother to leave a message but disconnects and starts to walk in the direction of Lafayette Square with no clear purpose except to lose herself in the crowd.
* * *
ASHER HAD ALREADY cleared Baltimore and was approaching the exit for Abingdon off I-95 when he saw Hayley’s call light up his phone on the passenger seat next to him. He reluctantly picked up the phone to answer but then thought better of it and tossed the phone on the seat again. What more is there to say? He’s left Washington and is unsure he’ll ever be back. The notion of running for Congress now seems an embarrassing and juvenile pipe dream. His father, a graduate of Harvard Law School, has quietly lobbied for Asher entering the legal profession. Certainly there are worse fates.
The unappealing thrum of the Prius hybrid motor fills the vehicle cabin. Asher had pointedly not played music over the sound system. The less stimulation, the better. Perhaps his thoughts make for bad company, but Asher masochistically inflicts them on himself. First and foremost are his stifling feelings of guilt and self-loathing. He had quite obviously been played by Odom, who used Daniel as honeypot to draw Asher into a conspiratorial web. He no longer trusts a single thing Odom has told him in the past, and with that conviction comes a realization that he has the blood of at least two men on his hands.
